


Sleepless Nights

by paupotter_4869



Series: The Most Important Thing. . . [1]
Category: The Last of Us (Video Games)
Genre: Bonding, Father and daughter, Infected, Reminiscence, Road Trip, beacon of light in the midst of the Apocalypse, change of heart, long nights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:27:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27796906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paupotter_4869/pseuds/paupotter_4869
Summary: On one of the many nights throughout their trip across the country, Joel can't sleep.Just a short drabble from Joel's POV, showing he's slowly, but gradually, changing his mind and heart regarding Ellie.
Relationships: Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us)
Series: The Most Important Thing. . . [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033674
Kudos: 27





	Sleepless Nights

**Author's Note:**

> All credit to Naughty Dogs. I do not own anything.

A banshee shriek woke Joel up with a jolt. Gasping, he looked around, searching for the threat, reaching out for his gun. After two seconds, he concluded that no Infected had broken into the crappy hotel they were spending the night in and he relaxed a bit, breathing again. 

He stood and leaned against the windowsill. Listening. Scanning the darkness. Albeit he saw none of them, judging by the clicker sounds and the yells, it seemed the Infected were getting away from their hotel. The fire from the portable stovetop he’d cooked in had long evaporated and was not cause for concern. No one had spotted them. 

They were safe, for now. One could never be too sure these days. 

He knelt by his backpack, grabbed the canteen, and took a sip of blessedly cold water—staying hydrated, but saving as much as he could. It wasn’t just him he was providing for, anymore. 

Once more, he checked his wrist to know what time it was, only to remember, all too late, that he still wore that useless watch. Taking a look at the sky, he figured it was a few hours till sunrise. No need to wake Ellie up at such an ungodly hour and resume their journey just because he only scraped by a few hours of sleep at night. She needed her rest, it was not her fault he was such a light sleeper, even before the Apocalypse. 

Knowing he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, he took his weapons and sat down against the wall, by the window, to keep vigilant even if he managed to doze off. When Sarah was born, he never got much sleep, and when Nora left, anxiety skyrocketed for those first few years. A fly could fly in and it’d wake him up—not to mention whenever Sarah had a cold and spent her nights coughing and sneezing, or whenever she called him out in the middle of the night because she’d had a bad dream. He would show up at her doorstep within seconds, gasping for air, because his baby girl needed him. He was lucky to get five or six hours of sleep, considering he had to balance work, as well. 

After the Apocalypse. . . Well, no one who’d survived for twenty years without getting assaulted, beaten, or attacked by either humans or Infected ever slept with both eyes closed. 

Ellie mumbled in her sleep, something Joel couldn’t quite figure out. She used to do that, as he learned very early on with their mission. That first night at the safe house she’d told him she suffered bad dreams, too, but hadn’t imagined it would get so bad. He had no idea what images could her brain conjure up, certainly, imagination couldn’t be worse than the hellish world they lived in, and he felt for the girl who couldn’t find solace nor peace even in her sleep. ‘Sweet dreams’ was an oxymoron today. 

She fidgeted and tossed around, trying to find a more comfortable position that she couldn’t possibly find. Although she wasn’t complaining about the cold, rather the hard, stone floor she was sleeping on, Joel stood and placed his jacket over her shoulders. He stepped back before he woke her up by accident, some part of him wishing, not for the first time, he could offer her something else to make her comfortable. 

_That’s the way it is nowadays,_ he needed to remind himself, reaching a hand to his watch. There was just no way around it. Ellie would never know the comfort of a five-star hotel. Even if the Fireflies created a cure thanks to that girl, things would never be the way they once were. 

A few more clickers ran past the hotel in the next few hours, but overall, it was a quiet night—nothing that would disturb Ellie, and there had been, either, no emergency that forced them to flee and run for their lives. 

Before Joel knew it, sunrise came, and he started preparing breakfast. The smell of food did wake Ellie up, as it always did. 

“Morning, kiddo,” he said. 

She stood, rubbing her eyes, without mentioning today either the jacket she’d been wrapped in throughout the night, and Joel ached because of her eagerness to eat. They went to sleep hungry, they woke up hungry, they journeyed hungrily. Again, he had to remind himself that there was no way around it: the trip was long and the resources were scarce. Then again, whenever he cooked, he tried giving her the biggest portion. 

“Can’t believe we got a full night’s sleep,” she mentioned, her mouth full. 

“Yeah. No Infected to worry about, last night,” agreed Joel, sending her a small, reassuring smile. A couple of times this week, he’d been forced to wake Ellie up and change locations in the dead of night because of the proximity of Infected. He regretted not choosing better sleeping locations in the first place, too, and was glad that Ellie could make it up tonight. 

Just like with the jacket, those meant small gestures of kindness he tried to offer her, without really knowing why he did them. It seemed reasonable. 

“Ready to go, kiddo?”


End file.
